1.
Republics of the Soviet Union
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The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were ethnically based proto-states that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that the rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR. In the final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union officially consisted of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics, all of them, with the exception of the Russian Federation, had their own local party chapters of the All-Union Communist Party. In 1944, amendments to the All-Union Constitution allowed for branches of the Red Army for each Soviet Republic. They also allowed for Republic-level commissariats for foreign affairs and defense and this allowed for two Soviet Republics, Ukraine and Byelorussia, to join the United Nations General Assembly as founding members in 1945. All of the former Republics of the Union are now independent countries, however, most of the international community did not consider the Baltic countries to have legitimately been part of the USSR. Their position is supported by the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, in contrast, the Russian government and state officials maintain that the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states was legitimate. Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a federation, in accordance with provisions present in the Constitution, each republic retained the right to secede from the USSR. Under the constitution adopted in 1936 and modified along the way until October 1977, along with the state administrative hierarchy, there existed a parallel structure of party organizations, which allowed the Politburo to exercise large amounts of control over the republics. State administrative organs took direction from the party organs, and appointments of all party. Each republic had its own set of state symbols, a flag, a coat of arms, and, with the exception of Russia until 1990. Every republic of the Soviet Union also was awarded with the Order of Lenin, number of the union republics of the USSR varied from 4 to 16. In majority of years and at the decades of its existence. The Soviet Union considered the initial annexation legal, but officially recognized their independence on September 6,1991, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia, in winter of 1919 The Lithuanian–Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in 1919 but fell very soon. The Persian Socialist Soviet Republic, in what is now Iran, the Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic was proclaimed in 1918 but did not survive to the founding of the USSR, becoming the short-lived Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the RSFSR. When the Tuvan Peoples Republic joined the Soviet Union in 1944, it did not become a union republic, the leader of the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, suggested in the early 1960s that the country should become a union republic, but the offer was rejected. During the Soviet–Afghan War, the Soviet Union proposed to annex the Northern Afghanistan as its 16th union republic in what was to become the Afghan Soviet Socialist Republic, though administratively part of their respective Union Republics, ASSRs were also established based on ethnic/cultural lines. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, openness and restructuring were intended to liberalise, however, they had a number of effects which caused the power of the republics to increase
2.
Flag of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
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This flag was adopted by the Moldavian SSR on January 31,1952. The flag has three bands of red, green and red, with a hammer and sickle in the canton. Between 1929 and 1937, the hammer and sickle was removed, in 1940, the flag was red with the gold hammer and sickle in the top-left corner, with the Cyrillic characters РССМ above them in gold in a serif font. With perestroika in force, the Moldovan nationalism came in place with the Popular Front of Moldova being involved, on April 27,1990, the new flag of the Moldavian SSR consisted of the Romanian tricolor with the emblem of the Moldavian SSR in the centre. However, it was decided to use the flag without the emblem until new symbols were worked on, when Moldavia declared sovereignty in June 1990, the new flag was adopted on November 6,1990 and remains the flag of Moldova to this day. The flag closely resembles the current Flag of Transnistria
3.
Moldovan language
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Soviet policy emphasized distinctions between Moldovans and Romanians due to their different histories. Its resolution declared Moldovan a distinct language independent of Romanian, since the reintroduction of the Latin script in 1989, the 1991 Declaration of Independence of Moldova identified the official language as Romanian. The 1994 Constitution provided official status only to Moldovan, the status of the official language was further legislated in the early 2000s. The Parliament of the Republic of Moldova adopted a law defining Moldovan and Romanian as designations for the same language, the breakaway region of Transnistria continues to recognize Moldovan as one of its official languages, along with Russian and Ukrainian. The variety of Romanian spoken in Moldova is the Moldavian subdialect, the two countries share the same literary standard. In the 21st century, Moldovan has been declared as one of three languages of the breakaway Moldovan territory of Transnistria, alongside Russian and Ukrainian. The word Moldavian is also used to refer collectively to the varieties of spoken Romanian. The Moldavian variety is considered one of the five major varieties of Romanian. There is no particular linguistic break at the Prut River, the border between Romania and Moldova, in schools in Moldova, the term Romanian language has been used since independence. In 2007, Moldovan president Vladimir Voronin asked for the term to be changed to Moldovan language, but due to public pressure against that choice, the standard alphabet is equivalent to the Romanian alphabet. Until 1918, varieties of the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet were used, the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet was used in 1924–1932 and 1938–89, and remains in use in Transnistria. The history of the Moldovan language refers to the evolution of the glottonym Moldavian/Moldovan in Moldova. From a linguistic perspective, Moldovan is a name for the varieties of the Romanian language spoken in the Republic of Moldova. Before 1918, during the period between the wars, and after the union of Bessarabia with Romania, scholars did not have consensus that Moldovans and the Romanians formed a single ethnic group. Missing out all the important moments in the, The Moldovan peasants had grown up in a different entity and they identified as Moldovans speaking the language Moldovan. This caused reactions from pan-Romanian nationalists, the concept of the distinction of Moldovan from Romanian was explicitly stated only in the early 20th century. It accompanied the raising of awareness among Moldovans, with the Soviets emphasizing distinctions between Moldavians and Romanians. Major developments since the fall of the Soviet Union include resuming use of a Latin script in 1989, Moldovan was assigned the code mo in ISO 639-1 and code mol in ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3
4.
Workers of the world, unite!
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Five years before the Communist Manifesto, the phrase appeared in the 1843 book The Workers Union by Flora Tristan. It reflected Marxs and Engels view of proletarian internationalism, first that workers should unite in unions to better push for their demands such as workplace pay and conditions. Secondly, that workers should see beyond their various craft unions, and thirdly, that workers of different countries have more in common with each other than workers and employers of the same country. The phrase was used by the Industrial Workers of the World in propaganda and songs, the IWW used it when opposing World War I in both the USA and Australia. The slogan was the Soviet Unions state motto, appeared in the State Emblem of the Soviet Union, on 1919 Russian SFSR banknotes, on Soviet coins from 1921 to 1934, the nascent USSR under Vladimir Lenin was oriented toward international communism. Contemporarily, some socialist and communist parties continue using it, moreover, it is a common usage in popular culture, often chanted during labor strikes and protests. In the first Swedish translation of the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, later translations have, however, included the original slogan. Amongst Maoist-oriented groups a variation invented by Vladimir Lenin, Workers and Oppressed Peoples and Nations of the World and this slogan was the rallying cry of the 2nd Comintern congress in 1920, and denoted the anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist agenda of the Comintern. The phrase has been translated into many languages, all of the Soviet Socialist Republics in the Soviet Union had it as their motto translated into the local languages. An extensive list of translations is available at Wiktionary. Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
5.
Anthem of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The State Anthem of the Moldavian SSR was the national anthem of Moldova when it was a republic of the Soviet Union and was known as the Moldavian SSR. Originally, the anthem began with the words, Moldova cu doine străbune pe plaiuri. and was composed by Ștefan Neaga, with lyrics by the poets Emilian Bukov and Bogdan Istru in 1945. Ivan Bodiul, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldova, the lyrics were remade, removing all references to Stalin. The music was altered, removing the original three-stanza structure in favor of a single-stanza three-part structure. The beginning words of the anthem were changed to Moldova Sovietică, in 1945 Ștefan Neaga wrote the melody for the Anthem of Moldova SSR, for which the poets Emil Bukov and Bogdan Istru created the lyrics. E. Bukov remembered how demanding and self-critic was Ștefan Neaga, for this anthem, he made dozens of variants, each time being dissatisfied. The Anthem -said the composer-, had to be composed so when a person hears it, the anthem that they created, was highly appreciated by musicians, becoming for over 45 years the main song of the country. Through this musical work, Neaga became the pride and joy of the Moldavian people. Moldavian SSRs anthem is one of the best creations of this genre, adopted in 1945, it entered for three and half decades in our republics symbolism. It was very melodic and it had ties with folk music. The musicologist Leonid Răilean testified, In the years of the country, one day. And, as its author was no longer alive, Ivan Bodiul authorized Eduard Lazarev to renovate the anthem and this renovation deformed and damaged the music structure and thus, its sonority. One way or another, in the early 90s, this anthem was thrown to the dump of history. I wanted to play in this gratifying music event, to create the symbol of these historic victories, Neaga was an artist who supervised under his own magnifying glass the weaknesses of his art. French writer Claude Roy said that there is a type of character in one can see a creation as an art to shine for yourself and for others. Resume, The music was composed by Ștefan Neaga, and the lyrics by Emil Bukov, Neaga made dozens of variants, looking for musical perfection. He wanted to create a symbol of heroic victories of Stalin, in which Moldavian people regained their freedom, the melody, was very melodic and had some ties with folk music. Ivan Bodiul authorized composer Eduard Lazarev to renovate the anthem and this deformation damaged the music structure
6.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
7.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
8.
Gagauz language
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The Gagauz language is a Turkic language spoken by the Gagauz people of Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey, and it is the official language of the Autonomous Region of Gagauzia in Moldova. Gagauz belongs to the Oghuz branch of Turkic languages, alongside Azeri, Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz has two dialects, Bulgar Gagauzi and Maritime Gagauzi. Gagauz is a language from Balkan Gagauz Turkish. It appears that the first alphabet to be used for the language was the Greek alphabet in the late 19th century, for example, orientalist Otto Blau claims that plays of Euripides had been translated into the Gagauz language and had been written with Greek letters. Beginning in 1957, Cyrillic was used up until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, on the other hand, Gagauz lacks the Turkish letter ⟨ğ⟩, which had become completely silent in the Gagauz language. A study in 2012 was conducted on the Gagauz community to assess the current situation, the findings show that within Gagauzia, official documents, printed publications, and official web sites are only in Russian. The National Passport System in Moldova does not allow the spelling of names in Gagauz, signposts in Gagauzia are mostly in Romanian, and the names of squares and streets have not changed since the time of the Soviet Union. Despite various laws that support the rights of citizens to education in their native language, Gagauz, while the native language of all students, is only taught as a native language class for a few hours per week. Research has also shown there are not serious desires or attempts to institute Gagauz as a language of instruction. In a study,80. 6% of respondents preferred Russian as the medium of instructions at schools, there are, however, some notable efforts to increase Gagauz language education. Todor Zanet, editor-in-chief of the Ana Sözü local newspaper, has played a role in encouraging readers. Zanet has also contributed significantly to efforts to standardize the language, Ana Sözü is the largest local newspaper in Gagauzia. It is also the local newspaper still written entirely in Gagauz. In addition to printed materials, the company Gagauz Radio Televisionu produces radio and television broadcasts in Gagauz
9.
Ukrainian language
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Ukrainian /juːˈkreɪniən/ is an East Slavic language. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script, historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus. After the fall of the Kievan Rus as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire and it has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors. The Ukrainian language retains a degree of intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian. The first theory of the origin of Ukrainian language was suggested in Imperial Russia in the middle of the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov and this theory posits the existence of a common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of the Rus. Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia, like Lomonosov, they assumed the existence of a common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. This general point of view is the most accepted amongst academics worldwide, the supporters of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet scholars set the divergence between Ukrainian and Russian only at time periods. During the time of the incorporation of Ruthenia into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and this point of view is, however, at variance with some historical data. In fact, several East Slavic tribes, such as Polans, Drevlyans, Severians, Dulebes, White Croats, Tiverians, notably, some Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. In contrast, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Alexei Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century, Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky went even further, denying the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko, according to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to a migration of the population within the territory of todays Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was supported by George Shevelovs phonological studies. During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of Galicia-Vollhynia and their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts, examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh, rura, rynok, kushnir, and majster
10.
Demonym
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A demonym is a word that identifies residents or natives of a particular place, which is derived from the name of that particular place. It is a neologism, previously gentilic was recorded in English dictionaries, e. g. the Oxford English Dictionary, thus a Thai may be any resident or citizen of Thailand, of any ethnic group, or more narrowly a member of the Thai people. Conversely, some groups of people may be associated with multiple demonyms, for example, a native of the United Kingdom may be called a British person, a Brit, or a Briton. In some languages, when a parallel demonym does not exist, in English, demonyms are capitalized and are often the same as the adjectival form of the place, e. g. Egyptian, Japanese, or Greek. Significant exceptions exist, for instance the adjectival form of Spain is Spanish, English widely includes country-level demonyms such as Ethiopian or Guatemalan and more local demonyms such as Seoulite, Wisconsinite, Chicagoan, Michigander, Fluminense, and Paulista. Some places lack a commonly used and accepted demonym and this poses a particular challenge to those toponymists who research demonyms. The word gentilic comes from the Latin gentilis and the English suffix -ic, the word demonym was derived from the Greek word meaning populace with the suffix for name. National Geographic attributes the term demonym to Merriam-Webster editor Paul Dickson in a recent work from 1990 and it was subsequently popularized in this sense in 1997 by Dickson in his book Labels for Locals. However, in What Do You Call a Person From, a Dictionary of Resident Names attributed the term to George H. Scheetz, in his Names Names, A Descriptive and Prescriptive Onymicon, which is apparently where the term first appears. Several linguistic elements are used to create demonyms in the English language, the most common is to add a suffix to the end of the location name, slightly modified in some instances. Cairo → Cairene Cyrenaica → Cyrene Damascus → Damascene Greece → Greek Nazareth → Nazarene Slovenia → Slovene Often used for Middle Eastern locations and European locations. Kingston-upon-Hull → Hullensian Leeds → Leodensian Spain → Spaniard Savoy → Savoyard -ese is usually considered proper only as an adjective, thus, a Chinese person is used rather than a Chinese. Monaco → Monégasque Menton → Mentonasque Basque Country → Basque Often used for French locations, mostly they are from Africa and the Pacific, and are not generally known or used outside the country concerned. In much of East Africa, a person of an ethnic group will be denoted by a prefix. For example, a person of the Luba people would be a Muluba, the plural form Baluba, similar patterns with minor variations in the prefixes exist throughout on a tribal level. And Fijians who are indigenous Fijians are known as Kaiviti and these demonyms are usually more informal and colloquial. In the United States such informal demonyms frequently become associated with mascots of the sports teams of the state university system. In other countries the origins are often disputed and these will typically be formed using the standard models above
11.
Moldovans
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Moldovans are the largest population group of the Republic of Moldova, and a significant minority in Ukraine and Russia. This article refers primarily to the Romance language-speaking ethnic group native to Moldova, there is an ongoing controversy whether Moldovans are a fully fledged ethnic group or a regional subgroup of the Romanian ethnic group. Also, the Slavic neighbours called Moldovans Vlachs or Volokhs, a term used to refer to all native Romance speakers from Eastern Europe. Until the 1920s, historians generally considered Moldovans as a subgroup of the Romanian ethnos, if in the past, the term Moldovan has been used to refer to the population of the historical Principality of Moldavia. In 1918, Bessarabia joined the Kingdom of Romania, following a vote of Sfatul Ţării, the circumstance of the vote was itself complex, since the Romanian troops were present in Bessarabia at the request of the Sfatul Ţării as it was facing exterior threats and anarchy. The unified Romanian state promoted a common identity for all its Romanian-speaking inhabitants, in 1940, during World War II, Romania agreed to an ultimatum and ceded the region to the Soviet Union, which organized it into the Moldavian SSR. A poll conducted in the Republic of Moldova by IMAS-Inc Chișinău in October 2009 presented a detailed picture, the respondents were asked to rate the relationship between the identity of Moldovans and that of Romanians on a scale between 1 to 5. The results varied significantly among different categories of subjects, for instance, while 33% of the young respondents chose the same or very similar and 44% different or very different, among the senior respondents the corresponding figures were 18. 5% and 53%. A survey carried out in the Republic of Moldova in 1992 showed that 87% of the Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose to identify themselves as Moldovans, the major Moldovan political forces have diverging opinions regarding the identity of Moldovans. This contradiction is reflected in their stance towards the history that should be taught in schools. Governing forces such as the Liberal Party, Liberal Democratic Party, a significant number of intellectuals from the Bessarabia considered themselves part of the Romanian nation in the passing of time. Our brothers from Bukovina, Transylvania and Macedonia dont call themselves after the places they live in and that is what we should do as well. I think people come here not forced, but freely, for a return to their brothers and he is often quoted as saying We are Romanians, period. The 2004 census results reported that out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova,75. 81% declared themselves Moldovans, the 2001 census in Ukraine counted 258,600 Moldovans and 150,989 Romanians. In Russia,172,330 Moldovans have been counted in the 2002 Russian census and they are concentrated mostly in Moscow, but also in some rural areas in Kuban, southern Siberia, and the Russian Far East, where they were deported generations ago. Around 20,000 Moldovans live in Kazakhstan, mostly in the former capital Almaty, the largest share of the territory of the historical Principality of Moldavia together with all its formal capitals and the famous painted churches are located in Romania. The river Moldova now flows entirely through Romania, after the Russian annexation of Bessarabia in 1812, and Austrian annexation of Bukovina in 1775, the rest of Moldova united with Wallachia and formed the modern Romania. In 1998, Constantin Simirad, the mayor of Iaşi founded the Party of the Moldavians which later joined the Social Democratic Party
12.
Soviet people
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Soviet people or Citizens of the USSR was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Initially used as a reference to the Soviet population, it was eventually declared to be a new historical, social and international unity of people. Through the history of the Soviet Union, both doctrine and practice regarding ethnic distinctions within the Soviet population varied over time, minority national cultures were not completely abolished in the Soviet Union. By Soviet definition, national cultures were to be socialist by content and national by form, to be used to promote the official aims, the fifth record was the section of the obligatory internal passport document which stated the citizens ethnicity. The 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union finalized this definition, according to the 2010 Russian Census 27,000 Russians identified themselves as members of the Soviet people. Homo Sovieticus Melting pot New Soviet man Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality Rootless cosmopolitan Russification Zhonghua minzu, the equivalent notion in the Peoples Republic of China Yugoslavs
13.
Unitary state
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The majority of states in the world have a unitary system of government. Of the 193 UN member states,165 of them are governed as unitary states, unitary states are contrasted with federal states. In a unitary state, sub-national units are created and abolished, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is an example of a unitary state. Many unitary states have no areas possessing a degree of autonomy, in such countries, sub-national regions cannot decide their own laws. Examples are the Republic of Ireland and the Kingdom of Norway, in federal states, the sub-national governments share powers with the central government as equal actors through a written constitution, to which the consent of both is required to make amendments. This means that the units have a right of existence. The United States of America is an example of a federal state, under the U. S. Constitution, powers are shared between the federal government and the states
14.
One-party state
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All other parties are either outlawed or allowed to take only a limited and controlled participation in elections. One-party states explain themselves through various methods, most often, proponents of a one-party state argue that the existence of separate parties runs counter to national unity. Others argue that the one party is the vanguard of the people, the Soviet government argued that multiple parties represented the class struggle, which was absent in Soviet society, and so the Soviet Union only had one party, the Communist Party. Some one-party states only outlaw opposition parties, while allowing allied parties to exist as part of a permanent coalition such as a popular front. However, these parties are largely or completely subservient to the ruling party, examples of this are the Peoples Republic of China under the United Front, or the National Front in former East Germany. Others may allow non-party members to run for seats, as was the case with Taiwans Tangwai movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Within their own countries, dominant parties ruling over one-party states are referred to simply as the Party. One-party systems often arise from decolonization because one party has had a dominant role in liberation or in independence struggles. One-party states are often, but not always, considered to be authoritarian or totalitarian, however, not all authoritarian or totalitarian states operate based on one-party rule. Some, especially absolute monarchies and certain military dictatorships, have all political parties illegal. The term communist state is used in the West to apply to states in which the ruling party subscribes to a form of Marxism–Leninism. While the role of the Communist Party is enshrined in the constitution, no party is permitted to campaign or run candidates for election, the party was conceived by the original Black American settlers and their descendants who referred to themselves as Americo-Liberians. Initially, its ideology was influenced by that of the Whig Party in the United States. Over time it developed into a powerful Masonic Order that ruled every aspect of Liberian society for well over a century until it was overthrown in 1980, while the True Whig Party still exists today, its influence has substantially declined
15.
Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The PMSSR was never recognized as a Soviet republic by authorities in either Moscow or Chișinău. In 1991, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic succeeded the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic from which the PMSSR seceded was created in 1940 following the Soviet annexation of territory belonging to inter-war Romania. The newly fused territory became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, and was quickly sovietized, while intended to reinvigorate the Soviet system, perestroika also undermined the strength of key institutions which provided for central control of the Soviet Union. This devolution of centralized power to republican legislatures was matched by an explosion of mass participation in the now open debate about the Soviet future. Two sets of concerns were prominent in the debates that accompanied the opening of political dialogue in the late 1980s. The first was concern for the devastation that was so characteristic of Soviet industrial society. The second, and increasingly ascendant concern, revolved around the Moldovan language and national heritage that many felt had been trammeled by Soviet, cultural revival was just one of the issues championed by such informals in early 1988. Social mobilization came late to the cities that became the centers of pro-Pridnestrovian activity. Social mobilization in Tiraspol and Bendery was mostly achieved through workplace networks called Work Collective Councils Work Collective Soviets, the mobilization in Transnistria was a reaction to the national revivalist mobilization in Bessarabian Moldova. The councils were created throughout the Soviet Union in 1987 with the Law on State Enterprises as part of the perestroika reforms and they were intended to foster democratization and increase efficiency in Soviet industry. However, they were also ready-made forums for debate and provided a structure which used to take control of Moldovan industry in late 1989. The national revivalist movements were created essentially from scratch and led by cultural figures, the internationalist movement in Transnistria took advantage of workplace institutions to build a countermovement and looked to engineers and factory managers for leadership. Staffed as it was with Moldovas Romanized cultural elite, the commission recommended the government accept all three points of the national revivalists demands. This move did nothing to diffuse the inevitable tension involved with the very project, a further draft leaked in August further escalated tensions because its opponents believed that it was even more pro-nationalist and radical than the first draft. The law was passed in a stormy Supreme Soviet session on 31 August 1989 and it declared that, The state language of Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic is Moldovan. The state language is used in political, economic, social and cultural life, however, it went on to promise protection of the Russian and other languages of Moldovas minority populations. Elsewhere in Chişinău and other cities, smaller rallies voiced opposition, the most effective, opposition, came in the form of a massive strike movement that originated in the Transnistrian city of Tiraspol. While the group Intermovement-Unitate-Edinstvo was the first to organize significant opposition to the language legislation, STKs became the focus around which opposition activity turned in the early part of the conflict
16.
Gagauzia
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Gagaúzia, formally known as the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, is an autonomous region of Moldova. Its name comes from the Gagauz people, gagaúz Yerí literally means place of the Gagauz. According to some theories, the Gagauz people descend from the Seljuq Turks who settled in Dobruja following the Anatolian Seljuq Sultan Izzeddin Keykavus II and they may be descended from Pechenegs, Uz and Cuman peoples. More specifically, one clan of Oghuz Turks is known to have migrated to the Balkans during intertribal conflicts with other Turks and this Oghuz Turk clan converted from Islam to Orthodox Christianity after settling in the Eastern Balkans and were called Gagauz Turks. A large group of the Gagauz later left Bulgaria and settled in southern Bessarabia, according to other theories, Gagauz are descendants of Kutrigur Bulgarians. In the official Gagauz museum, a plaque mentions that one of the two theories is that they descend from the Bulgars. Nogai tribes who inhabited several villages in south Bessarabia were forced to leave, between 1812 and 1846, the Russians relocated the Gagauz people from what is today eastern Bulgaria to the orthodox Bessarabia, mainly in the settlements vacated by the Nogai tribes. They settled there together with Bessarabian Bulgarians in Avdarma, Comrat, Congaz, Tomai, Cișmichioi, some Gagauz were also settled in the part of the Principality of Moldavia that did not come under Russian control in 1812. But, within several years, villagers moved to live with their own people in the compact area descendants inhabit in the 21st century in the south of Bessarabia. Gagauz nationalism remained an intellectual movement during the 1980s, but strengthened by the end of the decade, in 1988, activists from the local intelligentsia aligned with other ethnic minorities to create a movement known as the Gagauz People. A year later, the Gagauz People held its first assembly, they passed a resolution demanding the creation an autonomous territory in southern Moldova, with the city of Comrat as its capital. The Gagauzian national movement intensified when Moldavian was accepted as the language of the Republic of Moldova in August 1989, replacing Russian. A part of the population of southern Moldova was concerned about the change in official languages. They had a lack of confidence in the government in Chișinău. The Gagauz were also worried about the implications for them if Moldova reunited with Romania, in August 1990, Comrat declared itself an autonomous republic, but the Moldovan government annulled the declaration as unconstitutional. At that time, Stepan Topal emerged as the leader of the Gagauz national movement, support for the Soviet Union remained high in Gagauzia, with a referendum in March 1991 returning an almost unanimous vote in favour of remaining part of the USSR. Many Gagauz supported the Moscow coup attempt in August 1991, in September Transnistria declared its independence, thus further straining relations with the government of Moldova. But, when the Moldovan parliament voted on independence on 27 August 1991, six of the 12 Gagauz deputies in the Moldovan parliament voted in favour, the Moldovan government began to pay more attention to minority rights
17.
Telephone numbers in the Soviet Union
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The telephone numbering plan of the USSR was a set of telephone area codes, numbers and dialing rules, which operated in the Soviet Union until the 1990s. After the collapse of the USSR, many newly independent republics implemented their own numbering plans, however, many of the principles of the Soviet numbering plan still remain. The former Soviet international code +7 is still retained by Russia, the Soviet Union used a four-level open numbering plan. The long distance prefix was 8, one could call a local number without the code. Local numbers usually consisted of 5-7 digits, with numbers only occurring in Moscow, Leningrad. Within the same numbering area the pattern was,8 2X YYYYYY, for example,809624 XXXXX for a call to the city of Klin, Klinsky District, Moscow Oblast. For international calls, one should dial 810 <country code> <code> <phone number>, for example,8101212 XXXXXXX for a call to New York City. Emergency numbers in the USSR began with 0 and had two digits, when one called the emergency numbers, no tariff was charged. 01 - Fire brigade 02 - Police 03 - Ambulance 04 - Gas leaks 07 was used to order long-distance calls through the operator, area codes with 0 denotes the republics and Oblasts of the European part of the USSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these codes in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were preserved, area codes in the Ukraine and Belarus later dropped initial 0. In Russia, in December 2005 the leading zero in the Oblastal area codes was replaced by a 4. agava. ru/sngsity/sng01. htm http, //phonecodes. by. ru/01. html http, //www. scross. ru/guide/phone-local/
18.
Kingdom of Romania
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The Kingdom of Romania was a constitutional monarchy which existed between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania. As such, it is distinct from the Romanian Old Kingdom. From 1859 to 1877, Romania evolved from a union of two vassal principalities under a single prince to a full-fledged independent kingdom with a Hohenzollern monarchy. During 1918-20, at the end of World War I, Transylvania, Eastern Moldavia, in 1947 King Michael was compelled to abdicate and a socialist republic ruled by the Romanian Communist Party replaced the monarchy. The 1859 ascendancy of Alexandru Ioan Cuza as prince of both Moldavia and Wallachia under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire united an identifiably Romanian nation under a single ruler. On 5 February 1862 the two principalities were united to form the Principality of Romania, with Bucharest as its capital. On 23 February 1866 a so-called Monstrous coalition, composed of Conservatives and radical Liberals, the German prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was appointed as Prince of Romania, in a move to assure German backing to unity and future independence. He immediately adopted the Romanian spelling of his name, Carol, on 15 March 1881, as an assertion of full sovereignty, the Romanian parliament raised the country to the status of a kingdom, and Carol was crowned as king on 10 May. Abstaining from the Initial Balkan War against the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Romania entered the Second Balkan War in June 1913 against the Tsardom of Bulgaria,330,000 Romanian troops moved across the Danube and into Bulgaria. One army occupied Southern Dobrudja and another moved into northern Bulgaria to threaten Sofia, Romania thus acquired the ethnically-mixed territory of Southern Dobrudja, which it had desired for years. In 1916 Romania entered World War I on the Entente side, the term came into use after World War I, when the Old Kingdom was opposed to Greater Romania, which included Transylvania, Banat, Bessarabia, and Bukovina. Nowadays, the term mainly has a historical relevance, and is used as a common term for all regions in Romania included in both the Old Kingdom and present-day borders. Romania delayed in entering World War I, but ultimately declared war on the Central Powers in 1916, War with the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 resulted in the occupation of Budapest by Romanian troops and the end of Béla Kuns Bolshevik regime. At the Paris Peace Conference, Romania received territories of Transylvania, part of Banat, Bessarabia, thus, Romania in 1920 was more than twice the size it had been in 1914. Although the country was satisfied and had no territorial claims, it aroused the enmity of Bulgaria, and especially Hungary. Greater Romania now encompassed a significant minority population, especially of Hungarians, by contrast, the prewar Romanian state had only one real minority, Jews, but nonetheless anti-Semitism was widespread. Transylvania had significant Hungarian and German population, and with a contemptuous attitude towards Romanians. Both groups were excluded from politics as the postwar Romanian regime passed an edict stating that all personnel employed by the state had to speak Romanian
19.
Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
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Establishing the republic became a matter of dispute. Soviet commissar of foreign relations Chicherin held that its establishment would be premature, on the other hand, Kotovski held that a new republic would spread Communist ideas into neighboring Bessarabia, with a chance that even Romania and the entire Balkan region would be revolutionized. On March 7,1924, it was decided to create a Moldavian Autonomous Oblast within the Ukrainian SSR. For the Soviets the republic was to be a way for winning over Bessarabians of Romania, the Moldavian ASSR was created from a territory previously administered as part of the Odessa and Podolia regions of Ukraine. It accounted for 2% of the land and population of the Ukrainian SSR at the time. 52% Moldavians, the official capital was proclaimed the temporarily occupied city of Kishinev. Meanwhile, a capital was established in Balta and moved to Tiraspol in 1929. MASSR had a mixed Ukrainian and Moldavian population, which was estimated at 545,500 and its area was 8,677 km2 and included 11 raions on the left bank of Dniester. During the Russian Civil War, the area of the Moldavian ASSR switched hands twelve times between the White Movement, the Red Army, the Cossacks, Ukrainian militias and roving hordes of bandits. After the victory of the Bolsheviks, in 1920, it part of the Ukrainian SSR. The area was industrialized, and because of the lack of a qualified workforce. In particular, in 1928, of 14,300 industrial workers only about 600 were Moldavians, in 1925 MASSR survived a famine. In December 1927, Time reported a number of anti-Soviet uprisings among peasants and factory workers in Tiraspol, troops from Moscow were sent to the region and suppressed the unrest, resulting in ca 4000 deaths. The insurrections were at the time denied by the official Kremlin press. Collectivization in the MASSR was even more fast-paced than in Ukraine and was reported to be complete by summer 1931 and this was accompanied by the deportation of about 2,000 families to Kazakhstan. In 1932–33 another famine, known as Holodomor in Ukraine, occurred, during the famine, thousands of inhabitants tried to escape over the Dniester, despite the threat of being shot. The most notable incident happened near the village Olănești on February 23,1932. This was reported in European newspapers by survivors, the Soviet side reported this as an escape of kulak elements subverted by Romanian propaganda. The tenet that the Moldavian language is distinct from the Romanian language was promoted in the republic
20.
Moldova
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Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova (Romanian, Republica Moldova, listen, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. In 1856, southern Bessarabia was returned to Moldavia, but Russian rule was restored over the whole of the region in 1878, Bessarabia remained a province of the Russian Empire until 1917, when during the Russian Revolution it became an autonomous and then nominally independent Moldavian Democratic Republic. In 1918, following a vote of its assembly, Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania, the decision was disputed by Soviet Russia, which in 1924, created within the Ukrainian SSR, on a territory east of Bessarabia, a so-called Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1940, as a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Romania was compelled to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union, the Soviets decided to split the region between a newly established Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian SSR. The Moldavian SSR included two-thirds of the territory of Bessarabia, on 27 August 1991, as part of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Moldavian SSR declared independence and took the name Moldova. The current Constitution of Moldova was adopted in 1994, the strip of the Moldovan territory on the east bank of the Dniester river has been under the de facto control of the breakaway government of Transnistria since 1990. Its economy is the poorest in Europe in per capita terms, Moldova is a parliamentary republic with a president as head of state and a prime minister as head of government. The name Moldova derives from the Moldova River, the valley of this served as a political centre at the time of the foundation of the Principality of Moldavia in 1359. The origin of the name of the river remains unclear, the dogs name, given to the river, extended to the Principality. For a short time in the 1990s, at the founding of the Commonwealth of Independent States, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country began to use the Romanian name, Moldova. Officially, the name Republic of Moldova is designated by the United Nations, in 2010, Oldowan flint tools were discovered at Bayraki that are 800, 000–1.2 million years old. This demonstrates that humans were present in Moldova during the early Paleolithic era. The inhabitants of this civilization, which lasted roughly from 5500 to 2750 BC, practiced agriculture, raised livestock, hunted, in antiquity, Moldovas territory was inhabited by Dacian tribes. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD, the south was intermittently under the Roman, and then Byzantine Empires. The Principality of Moldavia, established in 1359, was bounded by the Carpathian Mountains in the west, the Dniester River in the east, and the Danube River and Black Sea to the south. Its territory comprised the territory of the Republic of Moldova, the eastern eight counties of Romania. Like the present-day republic and Romanias north-eastern region, it was known to the locals as Moldova, Moldavia was invaded repeatedly by Crimean Tatars and, beginning in the 15th century, by the Turks. In 1538, the principality became a tributary to the Ottoman Empire, the title used in the document of 6 July 1600 was The King of the country of Romania, Ardeal and of all of Moldavia
21.
Transnistria
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The region is considered by the UN to be part of Moldova. The PMR controls a narrow strip of territory to the east of the River Dniester, unrecognised by any United Nations member state, Transnistria is designated by the Republic of Moldova as the Transnistria autonomous territorial unit with special legal status, or Stînga Nistrului. As part of agreement, a three-party Joint Control Commission supervises the security arrangements in the demilitarised zone. Its authorities have adopted a constitution, flag, national anthem and it is the only country still using the hammer and sickle on its flag. After a 2005 agreement between Moldova and Ukraine, all Transnistrian companies that seek to export goods through the Ukrainian border must be registered with the Moldovan authorities and this agreement was implemented after the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine took force in 2005. Most Transnistrians also have Moldovan citizenship, but many Transnistrians also have Russian and Ukrainian citizenship, the largest ethnic group is Moldovans, who historically had a higher share of the population, up to 49. 4% in 1926. Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia are post-Soviet frozen conflict zones and these four partially recognised states maintain friendly relations with each other and form the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations. The region is known in English as Trans-Dniestr or Transdniestria. Etymologically, these names are adaptations of the Romanian colloquial name of the region, the documents of the government of Moldova refer to the region as Stînga Nistrului meaning Left Bank of the Dniester. The name of the according to the Transnistrian authorities is Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. The short form of name is Pridnestrovie. Pridnestrovie is a transliteration of the Russian Приднестровье meaning by the Dniester, indo-European tribes had for millennia inhabited the area where Transnistria now is when it was a borderland between Dacia and Scythia. The Tyragetae inhabited the area around the River Dniester as well as the Scythians, early Germanic and Turkic tribes were present in the area during their attacks and invasions of the Roman Empire. From 56 AD, the area around the city of Tyras was occupied by the Romans for nearly four centuries. Tyras enjoyed great development during Roman times, there is a series of its coins with heads of emperors from Domitian to Alexander Severus, but in the second half of the fourth century the area was continuously attacked by barbarians and the Roman legionaries left Tyras. In the early Middle Ages, Slavic tribes of Tivertsi and Ulichs populated larger areas, including Transnistria, followed by Turkic nomads such as the Petchenegs and Cumans. Possibly an early part of Kievan Rus, after the Mongol invasion of Europe in 1241, prince of Moldavia George Ducas built a court at Țicanova on the east bank of the Dniester, and one at Nimirov on the Southern Bug, last mentioned in Moldavian hands in 1765. The localities Dubăsari, Rașcov, Vasilcău, as well as four other currently in Ukraine are mentioned in 17th–18th centuries as fairs for the Dniester-Bug region
22.
Romanian language
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Romanian is a Romance language spoken by around 24 million people as a native language, primarily in Romania and Moldova, and by another 4 million people as a second language. It has official status in Romania and the Republic of Moldova and it is one of the official languages of the European Union and the Latin Union. Romanian is a part of the Balkan-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin separated from the Western Romance during the 5th–8th centuries. To distinguish it within that group in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian. Eastern Romance languages, like the branches of Romance languages, descend from Vulgar Latin. These vestiges of military usage are unique to Romanian in its language family. s. o, sat village, șes plain, a supune, tindă veranda, țară homeland a. s. o. This linguistic evidence challenges the Roeslerian theory, the vestiges from sermo castrensis particularize the Romanian language in the neolatin area, together with its isolated history. e. With Rom. māgurā and Alb. magulë etc, the Roman Empire withdrew from Dacia in 271–272 AD, leaving it to the Goths. The history of Eastern Romance between the 3rd century and the development of Proto-Romanian by the 10th century, when the area came under the influence of the Byzantine Empire, is unknown. It is a matter of debate whether Proto-Romanian developed among Romanized people who were left behind in Dacia by the Roman withdrawal or among Latin-speakers in the Balkans south of the Danube, during the Middle Ages, Romanian became influenced by the Slavic languages and to some degree by Greek. Romanian remains unattested throughout the Middle Ages, and only enters the record in the early 16th century. The use of the denomination Romanian for our language and use of the demonym Romanians for speakers of this language predates the foundation of the modern Romanian state. In 1534, Tranquillo Andronico notes, Valachi nunc se Romanos vocant, francesco della Valle writes in 1532 that Romanians are calling themselves Romans in their own language, and he subsequently quotes the expression, Știi Românește. After travelling through Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania Ferrante Capecci accounts in 1575 that the population of these regions call themselves românești. Pierre Lescalopier writes in 1574 that those who live in Moldavia, Wallachia, the Transylvanian Saxon Johann Lebel writes in 1542 that Vlachi se numeau între ei Romuini and the Polish chronicler Stanislaw Orzechowski notes in 1554 that în limba lor walachii se numesc romini. In Palia de la Orăștie stands written «, că văzum cum toate limbile au și înfluresc întru cuvintele slăvite a lui Dumnezeu numai noi românii pre limbă nu avem. și le-au dăruit voo fraților români. », nevertheless, the oldest extant document written in Romanian remains Neacșus letter and was written using Cyrillic letters. There are no records of any documents written in Romanian from before 1521
23.
Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet
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The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is a Cyrillic alphabet designed for the Romanian language in the Soviet Union and was in official use from 1924 to 1932 and 1938 to 1989. Its re-introduction was decided by the Central Executive Committee of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on May 19,1938, Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is an indirect revival of its Romanian counterpart. Abandoned for a Latin-based alphabet during the Union-wide Latinisation campaign in 1932, it was reinstated as official in 1938, there were several requests to switch back to the Latin alphabet, which was seen more suitable for the Romance core of the language, in the Moldovan SSR. The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is still the official and the only accepted alphabet in Transnistria for this language, all but one of the letters of this alphabet can be found in the modern Russian alphabet, the exception being the character zhe with breve, Ӂ ӂ. The following chart shows the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet compared with the Latin alphabet currently in use, IPA values are given for the post-1957 literary standard. Limba noastră Romanian alphabet Romanian Cyrillic alphabet Ӂ King, Charles, the Moldovans, Romania, Russia and the Politics of Culture. The Politics of Language in Moldova, Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet – example text and comparison with Latin script Moldovan Cyrillic • Keyboard Layout for Windows
24.
Bessarabia
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Bessarabia is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. The acquisition was among the Empires last territorial acquisitions in Europe, the newly acquired territories were organised as the Governorate of Bessarabia, adopting a name previously used for the southern plains, between the Dniester and the Danube rivers. In 1917, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the area constituted itself as the Moldavian Democratic Republic, bolshevik agitation in late 1917 and early 1918 resulted in the intervention of the Romanian Army, ostensibly to pacify the region. Soon after, the assembly declared independence, and then union with the Kingdom of Romania. The legality of acts was however disputed, most prominently by the Soviet Union. Axis-aligned Romania briefly recaptured the region in 1941 during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, in 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border along the Prut was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended World War II. Part of the Gagauz-inhabited areas in the southern Bessarabia was organised in 1994 as a region within Moldova. According to the interpretation, the name Bessarabia derives from the Wallachian Basarab dynasty. Recent research has however cast doubt on this view, as the name was first applied to the territory by Western cartographers, showing up in local sources only in the second half of the 17th century. Furthermore, the use of the term to refer to the Moldavian lands near the Black Sea was explicitly rejected as a confusion by the early Moldavian chronicler Miron Costin. The confusion may have been caused by Polish references to Wallachia as Bessarabia, according to Dimitrie Cantemir, the name originally applied only to the part of the territory south of the Upper Trajanic Wall, somewhat bigger than current Budjak. The name Bessarabia may literally mean Bessi slaves after the Thracian tribe which was expelled by Trajan north of the Danube. The region is bounded by the Dniester to the north and east, the Prut to the west and the lower River Danube and it has an area of 45,630 km2. The area is mostly hilly plains with flat steppes and it is very fertile, and has lignite deposits and stone quarries. People living in the area grow sugar beet, sunflowers, wheat, maize, tobacco, wine grapes and they also raise sheep and cattle. Currently, the industry in the region is agricultural processing. The regions main cities are Chișinău, Izmail and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, historically called Cetatea Albă / Akkerman, other towns of administrative or historical importance include, Khotyn, Reni and Kilia, and Lipcani, Briceni, Soroca, Bălți, Orhei, Ungheni, Bender/Tighina and Cahul. In the late 14th century, the newly established Principality of Moldavia encompassed what became known as Bessarabia
25.
MASSR
–
Establishing the republic became a matter of dispute. Soviet commissar of foreign relations Chicherin held that its establishment would be premature, on the other hand, Kotovski held that a new republic would spread Communist ideas into neighboring Bessarabia, with a chance that even Romania and the entire Balkan region would be revolutionized. On March 7,1924, it was decided to create a Moldavian Autonomous Oblast within the Ukrainian SSR. For the Soviets the republic was to be a way for winning over Bessarabians of Romania, the Moldavian ASSR was created from a territory previously administered as part of the Odessa and Podolia regions of Ukraine. It accounted for 2% of the land and population of the Ukrainian SSR at the time. 52% Moldavians, the official capital was proclaimed the temporarily occupied city of Kishinev. Meanwhile, a capital was established in Balta and moved to Tiraspol in 1929. MASSR had a mixed Ukrainian and Moldavian population, which was estimated at 545,500 and its area was 8,677 km2 and included 11 raions on the left bank of Dniester. During the Russian Civil War, the area of the Moldavian ASSR switched hands twelve times between the White Movement, the Red Army, the Cossacks, Ukrainian militias and roving hordes of bandits. After the victory of the Bolsheviks, in 1920, it part of the Ukrainian SSR. The area was industrialized, and because of the lack of a qualified workforce. In particular, in 1928, of 14,300 industrial workers only about 600 were Moldavians, in 1925 MASSR survived a famine. In December 1927, Time reported a number of anti-Soviet uprisings among peasants and factory workers in Tiraspol, troops from Moscow were sent to the region and suppressed the unrest, resulting in ca 4000 deaths. The insurrections were at the time denied by the official Kremlin press. Collectivization in the MASSR was even more fast-paced than in Ukraine and was reported to be complete by summer 1931 and this was accompanied by the deportation of about 2,000 families to Kazakhstan. In 1932–33 another famine, known as Holodomor in Ukraine, occurred, during the famine, thousands of inhabitants tried to escape over the Dniester, despite the threat of being shot. The most notable incident happened near the village Olănești on February 23,1932. This was reported in European newspapers by survivors, the Soviet side reported this as an escape of kulak elements subverted by Romanian propaganda. The tenet that the Moldavian language is distinct from the Romanian language was promoted in the republic
26.
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
The Ukrainian SSR was a founding member of the United Nations, although it was legally represented by the All-Union state in its affairs with countries outside of the Soviet Union. From the start, the city of Kharkiv served as the republics capital. However, in 1934, the seat of government was moved to the city of Kyiv. Geographically, the Ukrainian SSR was situated in Eastern Europe to the north of the Black Sea, bordered by the Soviet republics of Moldavia, Byelorussia, the Ukrainian SSRs border with Czechoslovakia formed the Soviet Unions western-most border point. According to the Soviet Census of 1989 the republic had a population of 51,706,746 inhabitants, the name Ukraine, derived from the Slavic word kraj, meaning land or border. It was first used to part of the territory of Kievan Rus in the 12th century. The name has been used in a variety of ways since the twelfth century, after the abdication of the tsar and the start of the process of the destruction of the Russian Empire many people in Ukraine wished to establish a Ukrainian Republic. During a period of war from 1917-23 many factions claiming themselves governments of the newly born republic were formed, each with supporters. The two most prominent of them were the government in Kyiv and the government in Kharkiv, the former being the Ukrainian Peoples Republic and the latter the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. This government of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic was founded on 24–25 December 1917, in its publications it names itself either the Republic of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies or the Ukrainian Peoples Republic of Soviets. The last session of the government took place in the city of Taganrog, in July 1918 the former members of the government formed the Communist Party of Ukraine, the constituent assembly of which took place in Moscow. On 10 March 1919, according to the 3rd Congress of Soviets in Ukraine the name of the state was changed to the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. After the ratification of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, the names of all Soviet republics were changed, transposing the second, during its existence, the Ukrainian SSR was commonly referred to as Ukraine or the Ukraine. On 24 August 1991, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic declared independence, since the adoption of the Constitution of Ukraine in June 1996, the country became known simply as Ukraine, which is the name used to this day. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, several factions sought to create an independent Ukrainian state, the most popular faction was initially the local Socialist Revolutionary Party that composed the local government together with Federalists and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks boycotted any government initiatives most of the time, instigating several armed riots in order to establish the Soviet power without any intent for consensus, immediately after the October Revolution in Petrograd, Bolsheviks instigated the Kiev Bolshevik Uprising to support the Revolution and secure Kyiv. Due to a lack of support from the local population and anti-revolutionary Central Rada, however. Most moved to Kharkiv and received the support of the eastern Ukrainian cities, later, this move was regarded as a mistake by some of the Peoples Commissars
27.
Independence of Moldova
–
The Independence of Moldova was officially recognized on March 2,1992, when Moldova gained membership of the United Nations. The nation had declared its independence from the Soviet Union on August 27,1991, Moldova became fully independent from the Soviet Union that December, and joined the United Nations three months later. Along with several other Soviet republics, from 1988 onwards, Moldova started to move towards independence and its identity with the Romanian language was also established. The first independent elections for the parliament were held in February. Mircea Snegur was elected as speaker of the parliament, and Mircea Druc as prime minister, after the failure of the 1991 Soviet coup détat attempt, on August 27,1991, Moldova declared its independence. On December 21 of the same year Moldova, along with most of the former Soviet republics, Moldova became fully independent from the Soviet Union on December 25,1991. The following day the Soviet Union ceased to exist, declaring itself a neutral state, it did not join the military branch of the CIS. Three months later, on March 2,1992, the country gained formal recognition as an independent state at the United Nations, in 1994, Moldova became a member of NATOs Partnership for Peace program and also a member of the Council of Europe on June 29,1995. The Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Moldova was a document adopted by the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the document claims millenary history and uninterrupted statehood within historic and ethnic borders. The Republic of Moldova gained official recognition of statehood on March 2,1992, when gaining membership of the United Nations
28.
Socialist Republic of Romania
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The Socialist Republic of Romania refers to Romania under Marxist-Leninist one-party Communist rule that existed officially from 1947 to 1989. From 1947 to 1965, the state was known as the Romanian Peoples Republic, the country was a Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc state with a dominant role for the Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its constitutions. As World War II ended, Romania, a former Axis member, was occupied by the Soviet Union, gradually, more members of the Communist Party and communist-aligned parties gained control of the administration and pre-war political leaders were steadily eliminated from political life. In December 1947, King Michael was induced to abdicate and the Peoples Republic of Romania was declared, at first, Romanias scarce post-war resources were drained by the SovRoms, new tax-exempt Soviet-Romanian companies that allowed the Soviet Union to control Romanias major sources of income. Another drain was the war reparations paid to the Soviet Union, in the 1950s, however, Romanias communist government began to assert more independence, inducing, for example, the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Romania by 1958. In the 1960s and 1970s, Nicolae Ceaușescu became General Secretary of the Communist Party, Chairman of the State Council, Ceaușescus denunciation of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and a brief relaxation in internal repression helped give him a positive image both at home and in the West. However, rapid growth fueled by foreign credits gradually gave way to an austerity. A large number of people were executed or died in custody during communist Romanias existence, while judicial executions between 1945 and 1964 numbered 137, deaths in custody are estimated in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Many more were imprisoned for political, economical or other reasons and suffered abuse, geographically, it bordered the Black Sea to the east, the Soviet Union to the north and east, Hungary to the north, Yugoslavia to the west and Bulgaria to the south. Romanian forces fought under Soviet command, driving through Northern Transylvania into Hungary proper and this changed in March 1945, when Dr. Petru Groza of the Ploughmens Front, a party closely associated with the Communists, became prime minister. His government was broad-based on paper, including members of most major parties except the Iron Guard. However, the Communists held the key ministries, and most of the ministers nominally representing non-Communist parties were, like Groza himself, despite the Kings disapproval, the first Groza government brought land reform and womens suffrage. However, it brought the beginnings of Soviet domination of Romania. In the elections of 19 November 1946, the Communist-led Bloc of Democratic Parties claimed 84% of the votes, a show trial of their leadership was then arranged, and they were put in jail. Other parties were forced to merge with the Communists, in 1946 and 1947, hundreds of participants in the pro-Axis government were executed as war criminals, primarily for their involvement in the Holocaust and for attacking the Soviet Union. Antonescu himself was executed 1 June 1946, by 1947, Romania remained the only monarchy in the Eastern Bloc. On 30 December that year, Michael was at his palace in Sinaia when Groza and they presented him with a pretyped instrument of abdication and demanded that he sign it. With pro-Communist troops surrounding his palace and his lines cut
29.
History of Moldova
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The history of Moldova can be traced to the 1350s, when the Principality of Moldavia, the medieval precursor of modern Moldova and Romania, was founded. The principality was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire from 1538 until the 19th century, in 1812, following one of several Russian-Turkish wars, the eastern half of the principality, Bessarabia, was annexed by the Russian Empire. In 1918, Bessarabia briefly became independent as the Moldavian Democratic Republic and, following the decision of the Parliament, in 1940 it was annexed by the Soviet Union, joined to the Moldavian ASSR, and became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic until the dissolution of the USSR. In 1991 the country declared independence as the Republic of Moldova and these cultures included the Linear Pottery culture, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, and the Yamna culture. The area, stretching from the Dnieper River in the east to the Iron Gate of the Danube in the west, had a civilization as highly advanced as anywhere else on Earth during the Neolithic period. The question as to why this area did not remain at the forefront of technological and social development lies in the subsequent history of its geographical location, at the end of the mostly peaceful Neolithic period, this area became a highway for invaders from the east moving into Europe. By the time the historical record begins to cover this area, it has already seen a number of invasions sweep over it. This trend was to continue on a regular basis up until the 20th century. With so much destruction, it was difficult for the residents of area to recover from each successive invasion before encountering the next. However, the few societies in this area managed to survive for a while through these turbulent centuries left behind a culture and history that are rich. In recorded antiquity Moldovas territory was inhabited by tribes, mainly by Dacians. Between the 1st and 7th centuries AD, the south was intermittently under the Roman, then Byzantine Empires. Due to its location on a route between Asia and Europe, Moldova was repeatedly invaded, among others, by the Goths, Huns, Avars, Magyars, Kievan Rus, Pechenegs, Cumans. The colonists of the Genoa Republic also left a trace in this region, the Hypatian Chronicle mentioned the name of the Bolohoveni a purportedly Romanian population connected to voloch, the East Slavic exonym of the Romanians. Alexandru V. Boldur identified the Bolohoveni as Romanians, the medieval Principality of Moldavia was established in 1359 and covered the so-called Carpathian–Danube–Dniester area, stretching from Transylvania in the west to the Dniester River in the east. Its territory comprised the territory of the Republic of Moldova, the eastern 8 of the 41 counties of Romania. Its nucleus was in the part, the Țara de Sus. The name of the principality originates from the Moldova River, bogdan I left his lands from Maramures with his army and part of the vlach/romanian population, by crossing the mountains to the east, after entering in conflict with the hungarian rulers
30.
Tatarbunary uprising
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It was led by a pro-Soviet revolutionary committee which called for the creation of a Moldavian Soviet Republic and an end to Romanian occupation. The uprising was instigated and led by communists from across the Dniester who were opposed to the establishment of Greater Romania, american professor and expert in Moldovan issues Charles King however considers the revolt, along with other similar rebellions in Romanian-administered Bessarabia, as modern jacqueries. After World War I relations between Romania and Soviet Russia were tense, since 1918 there were numerous bilateral meetings in Copenhagen, Warsaw, Genoa, and other locations but no consensus could be reached. The Soviets saw Bessarabia as a province and considered the decision of union with Romania as imposed by the occupying Romanian Army. The legitimacy of the Sfatul Ţării was also brought into question, in December 1923, the sixth Conference of the Balkan Communist Federation adopted a resolution condemning what was called Romanias expansionist nature. The Romanian state was accused that in 1918, taking advantage of Russias weakness and it also says that, because of this, “the nationalities in Bessarabia, Bukovina, Dobrudja and Transylvania undertook a fight for self-determination”. Between March 27 and April 2,1924 negotiations took place in Vienna in order to relieve Soviet-Romanian relations, Romania did not recognize the newly constituted USSR and the countries had no diplomatic relations. The Romanian delegation was led by C. Langa-Răşcanu and the Soviets were led by N. N. Krestinsky, the Soviet delegation immediately raised the question of Bessarabia and diplomat Maxim Litvinov presented a plan to conduct a plebiscite in Bessarabia. The Romanian government rejected the referendum, viewing it as a Soviet public relations campaign, Langa-Răşcanu claimed that in the entire Soviet Union there never was any kind of plebiscite, citing Leon Trotsky. On April 2,1924, the Romanian delegation rejected the Soviet proposal, the Soviet government assessed that, in 1924, all the conditions are met for major actions against Romania which would justify the intervention of Soviet Army. Similar actions were prepared for other countries from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the Comintern approved the plan that was to divide Romania into 5 action zone as following, North Zone – representing Bukovina, had the center of operation at Kamianka. Bessarabia – had the action zone in the south and it would advance to Galaţi with the help of a Soviet detachment that would cross the border at Olăneşti – Budaki – Tuzly. This was set to be the action zone. South-East Zone – comprising Dobrudja with the centers at Călăraşi – Silistra – Mânăstirea. The plan was to destroy the bridge near Feteşti that connected the province with Romania, help would be provided by land troops from the Soviet Union. Banat and Eastern Hungary – here, the proceedings were supported by Hungarian irredentist. The centers were Lugoj, Simeria and Caransebeş, northern Zone, Eastern Hungary and Transylvania – only public manifestations of workers and peasants were planned. Centers were designated at Cluj, Dej and Oradea, the Soviet Union had asked not to be directly involved in the preparations
31.
Dniester
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The Dniester River, or Dnister River is a river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and then through Moldova, finally discharging into the Black Sea on Ukrainian territory again, the name Dniester derives from Sarmatian dānu nazdya the close river. The Dnieper, also of Sarmatian origin, derives from the opposite meaning, alternatively, according to V. Abaev Dniester would be a blend of Scythian dānu river and Thracian Ister, the previous name of the river, literally Dān-Ister. The Ancient Greek name of Dniester, Tyras, is from Scythian tūra, the names of the Don and Danube are also from the same Proto Indo-European word *dānu - river. In Russian, it is known as Днестр, translit, dnestr, in Yiddish, Nester נעסטער, in Turkish, Turla and during antiquity, it was called Tyras in Latin and Danastris in Greek. Classical authors have referred to it as Danaster. These early forms, without -i- but with -a-, contradict Abaevs hypothesis, edward Gibbon refers to the river both as the Niester and Dniester in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Dniester rises in Ukraine, near the city of Drohobych, close to the border with Poland, and flows toward the Black Sea. Its course marks part of the border of Ukraine and Moldova, after which it flows through Moldova for 398 kilometres and it later forms an additional part of the Moldova-Ukraine border, then flows through Ukraine to the Black Sea, where its estuary forms the Dniester Liman. Along the lower half of the Dniester, the bank is high and hilly while the eastern one is low. The river represents the de facto end of the Eurasian Steppe and its most important tributaries are Răut and Bîc. During the Neolithic, the Dniester River was the centre of one of the most advanced civilizations on earth at the time, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture flourished in this area from roughly 5300 to 2600 BC, leaving behind thousands of archeological sites. Their settlements had up to 15,000 inhabitants, making them among the first large farming communities in the world, in antiquity, the river was considered one of the principal rivers of European Sarmatia, and it was mentioned by many Classical geographers and historians. According to Herodotus it rose in a lake, whilst Ptolemy places its sources in Mount Carpates. It ran in a direction parallel with the Ister. It fell into the Pontus Euxinus to the northeast of the mouth of the Ister, scymnus describes it as of easy navigation, and abounding in fish. Ovid speaks of its rapid course, Greek authors referred to the river as Tyras. At a later period it obtained the name of Danastris or Danastus, whence its name of Dniester
32.
Southern Bug
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The Southern Bug, also called Southern Buh, and sometimes Boh River, is a river located in Ukraine. It is the second-longest river in Ukraine and it is 806 kilometres long and drains 63,700 square kilometres. Major cities on the Southern Bug are Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, Pervomaisk, between 1941 and 1944 during World War II the Southern Bug formed the border between the German-occupied Ukraine and the Romanian-occupied part of Ukraine, called Transnistria. Herodotus refers to the river using its ancient Greek name, Hypanis, during the Migration Period of the 5th to the 8th centuries CE the Southern Bug represented a major obstacle to all the migrating peoples in the area. The long-standing local Slavic name of the river, Boh, may derive from a root meaning rich, the famous 17th-century French military engineer and geographer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan recorded the name of the river as Boh Ruthenian. From the 16th to the 18th centuries most of the Southern Ukraine formed part of the Crimean Khanate and/or of the Ottoman Empire, Bug, a Russian name, became established during the colonial period in Ukraine and known internationally. It was a given by a Russian geologist Vladimir Laskaryev at the beginning of 20th century. On March 6,1918 the Central Council of Ukraine adopted the law For the administrative-territorial division of Ukraine, one of those lands in the upper stream of the river was named Boh land. Previously in the 18th century there had existed the Bohogard phalanx as part of the Zaporizhian Sich centered in the city of Gard, the Varvarivskyi Bridge over Southern Bug in Mykolayiv is a swing bridge with Europes largest span. It is also the southernmost bridge over the river, the river is technically navigable for dozens of kilometers up from its mouth, several riverports exist. In 2011, plans are announced to revitalize commercial freight navigation on the Southern Bug as part of the grain export from Ukraine. They were cancelled because of the crisis following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. Southern Buh rafting Boh in the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland Photos of the Southern Buh coasts Southern Buh rafting, photo
33.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
34.
Northern Europe
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Northern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. However, narrower definitions may also be used based on geographical factors, such as climate. Greenland, geographically a part of North America, is politically a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, while Northern Europe overlaps with most of Northwestern Europe, north-Central Europe, and Northeastern Europe, it does not border Southern Europe. Countries which are central-western, central-central, or central-eastern are generally considered part of neither Northern Europe or Southern Europe. Historically, when Europe was dominated by the Mediterranean region, everything not near this sea was termed Northern Europe, including southern Germany, all of the Low Countries and this meaning is still used today in some contexts, such as in discussions of the Northern Renaissance. In medieval times, the term Thule was used to mean a place in the extreme northern reaches of the continent. The region has a south west extreme of around 50 degrees north, the entire regions climate is mildly affected by the Gulf Stream. From the west climates vary from maritime and maritime subarctic climates, in the north and central climates are generally subarctic or Arctic and to the east climates are mostly subarctic and temperate/continental. With the exception of the United Kingdom and Ireland, Northern European countries are known for harsh winters with temperatures reaching as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius in some parts. Countries in Northern Europe have large, developed economies and some of the highest standards of living in the world and they often score highly on surveys measuring quality of life, such as the Human Development Index
35.
Eastern Europe
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Eastern Europe, also known as East Europe, is the eastern part of the European continent. There is no consensus on the area it covers, partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, cultural. There are almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region, a related United Nations paper adds that every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct. One definition describes Eastern Europe as an entity, the region lying in Europe with main characteristics consisting in Byzantine, Orthodox. Another definition was created during the Cold War and used more or less synonymously with the term Eastern Bloc, a similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe. Historians and social scientists generally view such definitions as outdated or relegating, several definitions of Eastern Europe exist today, but they often lack precision or are extremely general. These definitions vary both across cultures and among experts, even scientists, recently becoming more and more imprecise. The Ural Mountains, Ural River, and the Caucasus Mountains are the land border of the eastern edge of Europe. Eurovoc, a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, provides entries for 23 EU languages, of these, those in italics are classified as Eastern Europe in this source. Other official web-pages of the European Union classify some of the countries as strictly Central European. The East–West Schism is the break of communion and theology between what are now the Eastern and Western churches which began in the 11th century and lasts until this very day and it divided Christianity in Europe, and consequently the world, into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity. Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches in the east, due to this religious cleavage, Eastern Orthodox countries are often associated with Eastern Europe. A cleavage of this sort is, however, often problematic, for example, Greece is overwhelmingly Orthodox, the fall of the Iron Curtain brought the end of the East–West division in Europe, but this geopolitical concept is sometimes still used for quick reference by the media. The Baltic states have seats in the Nordic Council as observer states and they also are members of the Nordic-Baltic Eight whereas Eastern European countries formed their own alliance called the Visegrád Group. Estonia Latvia Lithuania The Caucasus nations may be included in the definitions of Eastern Europe, the extent of their geographic or political affiliation with Europe varies by country and source. All three states are members of the European Unions Eastern Partnership program and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, on 12 January 2002, the European Parliament noted that Armenia and Georgia may enter the EU in the future. Georgia — in modern geography, Georgia has been classified as part of Eastern Europe. Under the European Union’s geographic criteria, Georgia is viewed as part of Eastern Europe and is the only Caucasus country to be actively seeking EU membership and it is a member of Council of Europe and Eurocontrol
36.
Sphere of influence
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Similarly, a formal alliance does not necessarily mean that one country lies within anothers sphere of influence. High levels of exclusivity have historically been associated with levels of conflict. In more extreme cases, a country within the sphere of influence of another may become a subsidiary of that state, the system of spheres of influence by which powerful nations intervene in the affairs of others continues to the present. It is often analyzed in terms of superpowers, great powers, for example, during the height of its existence in World War II, the Japanese Empire had quite a large sphere of influence. The Japanese government directly governed events in Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, sometimes portions of a single country can fall into two distinct spheres of influence. The term is used to describe non-political situations, e. g. a shopping mall is said to have a sphere of influence which designates the geographical area where it dominates the retail trade. Many areas of the world are considered to have inherited culture from a sphere of influence. According to a protocol attached to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939, Northern and Eastern Europe were divided into Nazi. In the North, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were assigned to the Soviet sphere, poland was to be partitioned in the event of its political rearrangement—the areas east of the Narev, Vistula, and San Rivers going to the Soviet Union while Germany would occupy the west. Lithuania, adjacent to East Prussia, would be in the German sphere of influence, another clause of the treaty stipulated that Bessarabia, then part of Romania, would join the Moldovan ASSR and become the Moldovan SSR under the control of Moscow. The Soviet invasion of Bukovina on 28 June 1940 violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, from 1941 and the German attack on the Soviet Union, the Allied Coalition operated on the unwritten assumption that the Western Powers and the Soviet Union had each its own sphere of influence. Western Europe, Oceania, Japan, and South Korea, among other places, were said to lie under the sphere of influence of the United States. However, the level of control exerted in these varied and was not absolute. For instance, France and Great Britain were able to act independently to invade the Suez Canal, later, France was also able to withdraw from the military arm of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. With the end of the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc fell apart, then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, replaced by the Russian Federation and several ex-Soviet Republics became independent states. According to Ulrich Speck, writing for Carnegie Europe, After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Western nations implicitly treated the post-Soviet countries as Russias sphere of influence. In 2009, Russia asserted that the European Union desires a sphere of influence, in March 2009, Swedens foreign minister Carl Bildt stated that The Eastern Partnership is not about spheres of influence. The difference is that these countries themselves opted to join, -all in the name of defending a sphere of influence on its borders
37.
Invasion of Poland
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The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty. German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident, as the Wehrmacht advanced, Polish forces withdrew from their forward bases of operation close to the Polish–German border to more established lines of defence to the east. After the mid-September Polish defeat in the Battle of the Bzura, Polish forces then withdrew to the southeast where they prepared for a long defence of the Romanian Bridgehead and awaited expected support and relief from France and the United Kingdom. While those two countries had pacts with Poland and had declared war on Germany on 3 September, in the end their aid to Poland was very limited. The Soviet Red Armys invasion of Eastern Poland on 17 September, in accordance with a protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Facing a second front, the Polish government concluded the defence of the Romanian Bridgehead was no longer feasible, on 6 October, following the Polish defeat at the Battle of Kock, German and Soviet forces gained full control over Poland. The success of the invasion marked the end of the Second Polish Republic, the Soviet Union incorporated its newly acquired areas into its constituent Belarusian and Ukrainian republics, and immediately started a campaign of sovietization. In the aftermath of the invasion, a collective of underground resistance formed the Polish Underground State within the territory of the former Polish state. Many of the exiles that managed to escape Poland subsequently joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. On 30 January 1933, the Nazi Party, under its leader Adolf Hitler, as part of this long-term policy, Hitler at first pursued a policy of rapprochement with Poland, trying to improve opinion in Germany, culminating in the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 1934. Earlier, Hitlers foreign policy worked to weaken ties between Poland and France, and attempted to manoeuvre Poland into the Anti-Comintern Pact, forming a front against the Soviet Union. The Poles feared that their independence would eventually be threatened altogether, the so-called Polish Corridor constituted land long disputed by Poland and Germany, and inhabited by a Polish majority. The Corridor had become a part of Poland after the Treaty of Versailles, many Germans also wanted the city of Danzig and its environs to be reincorporated into Germany. Danzig was a city with a German majority. It had been separated from Germany after Versailles and made into the nominally independent Free City of Danzig, the series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier. Poland participated with Germany in the partition of Czechoslovakia that followed the Munich Agreement and it coerced Czechoslovakia to surrender the region of Český Těšín by issuing an ultimatum to that effect on 30 September 1938, which was accepted by Czechoslovakia on 1 October. This region had a Polish majority and had been disputed between Czechoslovakia and Poland in the aftermath of World War I, the Polish annexation of Slovak territory later served as the justification for the Slovak state to join the German invasion. Poland rejected this proposal, fearing that after accepting these demands, it would become subject to the will of Germany
Moldova
Transnistria
Moldova portal._(13147721854).jpg)
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